The celebration of the Lord’s Day in
memory of the resurrection of Christ dates undoubtedly from the
apostolic age.299299 The original
designations of the Christian Sabbath or weekly rest-day are: ἡ
μία orμία
σαββάτων,
the first day of the week (Matt. 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 21:1;
Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2), and ἡ ἡμέρα
κυριακή, the
Lord’s Day, which first occurs in Rev. 1:10, then in
Ignatius and the fathers. The Latins render
it Dominicus or Dominica dies. Barnabas calls it the eighth day, in
contrast to the Jewish Sabbath. After Constantine the Jewish term
Sabbath and the heathen term Sunday (ἡμέρα
τοῦ
ἡλίου, dies
Solis)were used also. In the edict of Gratian, a.d. 386, two are combined: "Solis die, quem Dominicum
rite` dixere majores." On the Continent of Europe Sunday has ruled out
Sabbath completely; while in England, Scotland, and the United States
Sabbath is used as often as the other or oftener in religious
literature. The difference is characteristic of the difference in the
Continental and the Anglo-American observance of the
Lord’s Day.99
Nothing short of apostolic precedent can account for the universal
religious observance in the churches of the second century. There is no
dissenting voice. This custom is confirmed by the testimonies of the
earliest post-apostolic writers, as Barnabas,300300 Ep., c. 15: "We
celebrate the eighth day with joy, on which Jesus rose from the dead,
and, after having appeared [to his disciple, ;], ascended to heaven."
It does not follow from this that Barnabas put the ascension of Christ
likewise on Sunday.00 Ignatius,301301 Ep. ad Magnes. c.
8, 9.01 and Justin
Martyr.302302 Apol. I. 67.02
It is also confirmed by the younger Pliny.303303 "Stato die,
’ in his letter to Trajan, Ep. X. 97. This " stated
day, "on which the Christian, in Bithynia assembled before day-light to
sing hymns to Christ as a God, and to bind themselves by a sacramentum,
must be the Lord’s Day.03 The Didache calls the first day
"the Lord’s Day of the Lord."304304 Ch. 14: Κυριακὴ
κυρίου,
pleonastic. The adjective in Rev. 1:10.04

Considering that the church was struggling into
existence, and that a large number of Christians were slaves of heathen
masters, we cannot expect an unbroken regularity of worship and a
universal cessation of labor on Sunday until the civil government in
the time of Constantine came to the help of the church and legalized
(and in part even enforced) the observance of the
Lord’s Day. This may be the reason why the religious
observance of it was not expressly enjoined by Christ and the apostles;
as for similar reasons there is no prohibition of polygamy and slavery
by the letter of the New Testament, although its spirit condemns these
abuses, and led to their abolition. We may go further and say that
coercive Sunday laws are against the genius and spirit of the Christian
religion which appeals to the free will of man, and uses only moral
means for its ends. A Christian government may and ought to
protect the Christian Sabbath against open desecration, but its
positive observance by attending public worship, must be left to
the conscientious conviction of individuals. Religion cannot be forced
by law. It looses its value when it ceases to be voluntary.

The fathers did not regard the Christian Sunday as
a continuation of, but as a substitute for, the Jewish Sabbath, and
based it not so much on the fourth commandment, and the primitive rest
of God in creation, to which the commandment expressly refers, as upon
the resurrection of Christ and the apostolic tradition. There was a
disposition to disparage the Jewish law in the zeal to prove the
independent originality of Christian institutions. The same polemic
interest against Judaism ruled in the paschal controversies, and made
Christian Easter a moveable feast. Nevertheless, Sunday was always
regarded in the ancient church as a divine institution, at least in the
secondary sense, as distinct from divine ordinances in the primary
sense, which were directly and positively commanded by Christ, as
baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Regular public worship
absolutely requires a stated day of worship.

Ignatius was the first
who contrasted Sunday with the Jewish Sabbath as something done away
with.305305 Ep. ad Magna. c. 8,
9 in the shorter Greek recension (wanting in the Syriac edition).05 So did
the author of the so-called Epistle of Barnabas.306306 Cap. 15. This
Epistle is altogether too fierce in its polemics against Judaism to be
the production of the apostolic Barnabas.06 Justin
Martyr, in controversy with a Jew, says that the pious before
Moses pleased God without circumcision and the Sabbath,307307 Dial c. TryPh. M.
19, 27 (Tom. I. P. II. p. 68, 90, in the third ed. of Otto).07 and
that Christianity requires not one particular Sabbath, but a perpetual
Sabbath.308308 Dial. 12 (II, p.
46):σαββατίζειν
ὑμᾶς (so Otto reads,
but ἡμᾶς would be
better) ὁ
καινὸς
νόμος διὰ
παντὸς (belong to
σαββατίζειν)ἐθέλει.
Comp. Tertullian, Contra Jud. c. 4: "Unde nos
intelligimis magis, sabbatizare nos ab omni opere servili semper
debere, et non tantum septimo quoque die, sed per omne tempus."08
He assigns as a reason for the selection of the first day for the
purposes of Christian worship, because on that day God dispelled the
darkness and the chaos, and because Jesus rose from the dead and
appeared to his assembled disciples, but makes no allusion to the
fourth commandment.309309 Apol. I. 67 (I. p.
161):Τὴν δὲ
τοῦ ἡλίου
ἡμέραν
κοινῇ
πάντες τὴν
συνέλευσιν
ποιούμεθα,
ἐπειδὴ
πρώτη
ἐστὶν
ἡμέρα, ἐν
ᾗ ὁ θεὸς
τὸ σκότος
καὶ τὴν
ὕλην
τρέψας ,
κόσμον
ἐποίησε,
καὶ
Ἰησοῦς
Χριστὸς ὁ
ἡμέτερος
σωτὴρ τῇ
αυτῇ
ἡμέρᾳ ἐκ
νεκρῶν
ἀνέστη.
κ.τ.λ.09 He uses the term "to sabbathize" (σαββατίζειν), only of the Jews, except in the
passage just quoted, where he spiritualizes the Jewish law. Dionysius
of Corinth mentions Sunday incidentally in a letter to the church of
Rome, a.d., 170: "To-day we kept the
Lord’s Day holy, in which we read your letter."310310Eusebius, H. E. IV. 23.10 Melito of Sardis wrote a treatise on the
Lord’s Day, which is lost.311311Περὶ
κυριακῆς
λόγος. Euseb. IV.
26.11 Irenaeus of Lyons, about 170, bears testimony to the
celebration of the Lord’s Day,312312 In one of his
fragments περὶ τοῦ
πάσχα, and by his part in
the Quartadecimanian controversy, which turned on the yearly
celebration of the Christian Passover, but implied universal agreement
as to the weekly celebration of the Resurrection. Comp. Hessey, Bampton
Lectures on Sunday. London, 1860, p. 373.12 but likewise regards the Jewish
Sabbath merely as a symbolical and typical ordinance, and says that
"Abraham without circumcision and without observance of Sabbaths
believed in God," which proves "the symbolical and temporary character
of those ordinances, and their inability to make perfect."313313 Adv. Haer. IV.
16.13 Tertullian, at the close of the second and
beginning of the third century, views the Lord’s Day
as figurative of rest from sin and typical of man’s
final rest, and says: "We have nothing to do with Sabbaths, new moons
or the Jewish festivals, much less with those of the heathen. We have
our own solemnities, the Lord’s Day, for instance, and
Pentecost. As the heathen confine themselves to their festivals and do
not observe ours, let us confine ourselves to ours, and not meddle with
those belonging to them." He thought it wrong to fast on the
Lord’s Day, or to pray kneeling during its
continuance. "Sunday we give to joy." But he also considered it
Christian duty to abstain from secular care and labor, lest we give
place to the devil.314314 De Orat. c. 23:
"Nos vero sicut accepimus, solo die Dominicae Resurrectionis non ab
isto tantum [the bowing of the knee], sed omni anxietatis habitu et
officio cavere debemus, differentes etiam negotia, ne quem diabolo
locum demus." Other passages of Tertullian,
Cyprian, Clement of Alex., and Origen see in Hessey, l.c., pp. 375 ff.14 This is the first express evidence of
cessation from labor on Sunday among Christians. The habit of standing
in prayer on Sunday, which Tertullian
regarded as essential to the festive character of the day, and which
was sanctioned by an ecumenical council, was afterwards abandoned by
the western church.

The Alexandrian fathers have essentially the same
view, with some fancies of their own concerning the allegorical meaning
of the Jewish Sabbath.

We see then that the ante-Nicene church clearly
distinguished the Christian Sunday from the Jewish Sabbath, and put it
on independent Christian ground. She did not fully appreciate the
perpetual obligation of the fourth commandment in its substance as a
weekly day of rest, rooted in the physical and moral necessities of
man. This is independent of those ceremonial enactments which were
intended only for the Jews and abolished by the gospel. But, on the
other hand, the church took no secular liberties with the day. On the
question of theatrical and other amusements she was decidedly puritanic
and ascetic, and denounced them as being inconsistent on any day with
the profession of a soldier of the cross. She regarded Sunday as a
sacred day, as the Day of the Lord, as the weekly commemoration of his
resurrection and the pentecostal effusion of the Spirit, and therefore
as a day of holy joy and thanksgiving to be celebrated even before the
rising sun by prayer, praise, and communion with the risen Lord and
Saviour.

Sunday legislation began with Constantine, and
belongs to the next period.

The observance of the Sabbath among the Jewish
Christians gradually ceased. Yet the Eastern church to this day marks
the seventh day of the week (excepting only the Easter Sabbath) by
omitting fasting, and by standing in prayer; while the Latin church, in
direct opposition to Judaism, made Saturday a fast day. The controversy
on this point began as early as the, end of the second century

Wednesday,315315 Feria quarta.15 and especially Friday,316316 Feria sexta, ἡ
παρασκευή16 were devoted to the weekly
commemoration of the sufferings and death of the Lord, and observed as
days of penance, or watch-days,317317 Dies stationum of
the milites Christi.17 and half-fasting (which lasted till
three o’clock in the afternoon).318318 Semijejunia.18

299 The original
designations of the Christian Sabbath or weekly rest-day are: ἡ
μία orμία
σαββάτων,
the first day of the week (Matt. 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 21:1;
Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2), and ἡ ἡμέρα
κυριακή, the
Lord’s Day, which first occurs in Rev. 1:10, then in
Ignatius and the fathers. The Latins render
it Dominicus or Dominica dies. Barnabas calls it the eighth day, in
contrast to the Jewish Sabbath. After Constantine the Jewish term
Sabbath and the heathen term Sunday (ἡμέρα
τοῦ
ἡλίου, dies
Solis)were used also. In the edict of Gratian, a.d. 386, two are combined: "Solis die, quem Dominicum
rite` dixere majores." On the Continent of Europe Sunday has ruled out
Sabbath completely; while in England, Scotland, and the United States
Sabbath is used as often as the other or oftener in religious
literature. The difference is characteristic of the difference in the
Continental and the Anglo-American observance of the
Lord’s Day.

300 Ep., c. 15: "We
celebrate the eighth day with joy, on which Jesus rose from the dead,
and, after having appeared [to his disciple, ;], ascended to heaven."
It does not follow from this that Barnabas put the ascension of Christ
likewise on Sunday.

303 "Stato die,
’ in his letter to Trajan, Ep. X. 97. This " stated
day, "on which the Christian, in Bithynia assembled before day-light to
sing hymns to Christ as a God, and to bind themselves by a sacramentum,
must be the Lord’s Day.

312 In one of his
fragments περὶ τοῦ
πάσχα, and by his part in
the Quartadecimanian controversy, which turned on the yearly
celebration of the Christian Passover, but implied universal agreement
as to the weekly celebration of the Resurrection. Comp. Hessey, Bampton
Lectures on Sunday. London, 1860, p. 373.